Y-12 security breach anniversary

For decades, the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant relished its nickname, “the Fort Knox of Uranium.” The self-applied moniker helped define the type of work that takes place here and underscored the government facility’s top-security image.

On July 28, 2012, however, three intruders cut through fences, avoided detection and managed to reach the plant’s Protected Area, where nuclear warhead parts are manufactured and where the nation’s stockpile of bomb-grade uranium is stored.

The intruders weren’t terrorists or armed adversaries. They were Bible-quoting pacifists, including an 82-year-old Catholic nun, who walked unimpeded into the plant’s inner sanctum. And that made the security failures seem all the worse.

A year later, Y-12 is still making amends and searching for its lost reputation. Then-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu called the breach “unacceptable,” Congress held hearings to demand an explanation, and Inspector General Greg Friedman said his team found “troubling displays of ineptitude.”

Within a matter of weeks, the number of investigations reached double digits, and yet there are still open questions about whether the security problems have been fixed — or even properly identified.

Within the past month, DOE launched yet another review of security issues, not just at Y-12 but at agency sites around the nation.

U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the security breach at Y-12 “revealed a management problem” that hasn’t been addressed.

“The department’s response was to change the contract for who managed the security force,” Alexander said, referring to the firing of WSI-Oak Ridge. “But simply changing the contract is not real reform.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker visited the plant immediately after the security breach and received a classified briefing. According to Laura Herzog, the senator’s communications director, Corker was told Y-12 officials understood the seriousness of the matter and were taking appropriate corrective actions.

“Since then, another incident has occurred, suggesting that the Department of Energy still doesn’t have proper security measures in place at our nuclear weapons facilities,” Herzog said.

She was making reference to a June 6 security breakdown in which a lost and apparently confused driver was waved into the plant at the main entrance, even though she had no security credentials and no business at the weapons plant. Two months before that, a bike rider was arrested on a Y-12 patrol road — not far from where the “Plowshares protesters” initially broke into the plant — after traversing most of the plant’s northside boundary.

Despite these lapses, Y-12 supporters cite the many improvements made and claim the Oak Ridge plant is more secure now than it was a year ago, perhaps more secure than it’s ever been. That statement isn’t convincing because security relies on bluster, as well as barricades, and Y-12 appears to have lost its swagger.

“The aura of impregnability is gone. Probably forever,” said Howard Hall, director of the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Nuclear Security. “This might encourage others to think that similar acts of ‘aggressive dissent’ might succeed, and so we may see more of these intrusions in the future.

“The recent Greenpeace break-ins at nuclear plants in France might be indirectly a result of the greater daring of the perpetrators, encouraged in some part by the Y-12 ‘success.’ Likewise, if there is a violent adversary planning something, this has given them some potentially useful insights.”

Sister Megan Rice, now 83, Greg Boertje-Obed, 58, and Michael Walli, 64, are incarcerated at the Irwin County Detention Facility in Ocilla, Ga., though Rice got a special five-day release from custody over the weekend to attend the funeral of her brother-in-law.

The three apparently will remain at the Georgia facility until sentencing hearings, which were recently rescheduled for Sept. 30 in the U.S. District Court in Knoxville.

The “activists,” known collectively as the Transform Now Plowshares, were convicted in May on two felony counts for breaking into Y-12 and damaging government property. The most serious charge was attempting to injure or interfere with the national defense. That conviction legally categorized them as terrorists and made them ineligible for pre-sentencing release.

They face up to 30 years in prison, which could — given their ages — effectively become a life sentence.

In a steady stream of letters in recent weeks to U.S. District Judge Amul Thapar, Plowshares supporters have asked the judge to be lenient in his September sentencing. They cited the advanced age of the protesters and their peaceful nature and intent.

As might be expected, the jailed activists don’t get a lot of sympathy at Y-12.

Patsy Ruppe, a plant worker who lives in Kingston, wrote a June 10 letter to Thapar asking him to punish the three “to the highest degree of the law.”

“As a loyal American and employee with a company dedicated to protecting and preserving our country, I ask you to show no leniency toward the guilty Plowshares defendants,” Ruppe wrote. “These people continue to disrupt our facility; break the law by trespassing … and encourage others to do the same.

“They are habitual offenders and domestic terrorists.”

It seems surprising now, but in the months before the break-in, Y-12 was developing plans to scale down its security force. The National Nuclear Security Administration had ordered its security contractor, WSI-Oak Ridge, to cut costs to help address tight budgets — and layoffs were in the offing.

A spokeswoman for WSI said early last year, “This will not have an impact on the level of security at the Oak Ridge facilities as dramatic improvements in physical security have been completed in recent years, thus allowing us to achieve the same high level of security with a smaller workforce.”

The layoffs were scrapped, of course, after the older trio infiltrated the national security site, tossed blood against the walls of a $549 million storage bunker holding the nation’s primary supply of bomb-grade uranium, and made a mockery of the plant’s protection.

The government acknowledged spending about $15 million to repair damages and to shore up or replace the sensors, cameras and other security equipment found to be faulty. That dollar figure doesn’t come close to the total amount of money the government spent as a result of the incident, including personnel costs, investigations and training.

Though the government hasn’t given an official price tag, a couple of observers with detailed knowledge of the situation said the overall tab from the break-in will probably exceed $100 million.

Oak Ridge Mayor Tom Beehan said his first thought when he heard about the break-in at Y-12 was the safety of the city. As time moved on, Beehan started to worry about the economic impact of the break-in.

Y-12 shut down all nuclear operations for two weeks so that the entire workforce — not just the security personnel — could undergo refresher training on all things security. But the disruption at Y-12 went far beyond a pause in production.

Both the managing contractor, Babcock & Wilcox Y-12, and the protective force contractor, WSI, were given “show cause” notices from the government. Corporate entities were ordered to explain why they shouldn’t lose their contracts. Meanwhile, a number of top executives at the contractors lost their jobs, and eventually WSI lost its Y-12 contract entirely.

Mayor Beehan said that was a blow to the community. WSI, he said, was a major corporate presence in Oak Ridge, providing leadership and giving freely to community events and charitable causes.

“I understand what happened and why,” Beehan said, “but still …”

Moreover, the security shakedown threw a kink into the NNSA’s plans to award a new contract for the combined management of Y-12 and Pantex, a sister nuclear weapons facility in Texas. Bids on the $22 billion contract, one of the largest offerings in recent vintage, had been submitted in March 2012 and federal officials were in the process of evaluating those proposals when the Oak Ridge security incident changed the game plan. Instead of seeking a separate contractor for security at the two weapons installations, the NNSA asked the bidding teams on the management contract to resubmit their proposals and incorporate protective services at the sites.

The giant contract, nearly four years in the making, was finally awarded in January to Consolidated Nuclear Security — a team headed by Bechtel National and Lockheed Martin. The transition of contractors, however, was stalled because the losing bidders protested the award, and the government hasn’t revealed when it plans to make a final determination. The uncertainty about the contract has been a source of frustration for thousands of Y-12 employees, as well as for the community at large. Mayor Beehan said the security incident is at least partly to blame.

“You feel like you’re in limbo,” Beehan said.

Others wonder whether fallout from the security mess could impact the Uranium Processing Facility, billed as the biggest construction project in Tennessee history. While supporters say the multibillion-dollar project enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, others suggest UPF could be vulnerable and maybe more so because of the security problems.

Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., said there already is “exasperation” with the National Nuclear Security Administration’s governance and cost controls.

“Depending on how the deck plays out, change is in the cards for the NNSA — and the break-in plays a substantial role in how likely and how significant that change will be,” Young said. “It may be that the break-in was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”